Boy Harsher at Soup Kitchen
Johnny James, Managing Editor
Boy Harsher are an EBM/darkwave duo from Northampton, Massachusetts. They make menacing, sexy electronic music which calls to mind sci-fi films of the 80’s. Highly danceable, their hypnotic tracks are made of minimal beats, grinding synths and brooding, primal vocals whose lyrical focus is existential unease. After selling out The White Hotel last year, the duo will return to Manchester on the 26 February, this time bringing their grim hedonism to Soup Kitchen.
The pair released their debut album Yr Body Is Nothing in 2016. This album features a mixture of dancefloor drive and a sort of despairing pathos. Tracks like ‘A Realness’ and ‘Yr Body Is Nothing’, for example, revel in a suspended moment of anxiety whilst also inviting the listener to the dancefloor. That record was followed up this year by Lesser Man, wherein the ominous, cinematic atmospheres of its predecessor were born again. The hypnotic engine of that album is ‘Pain’ – a dark, hard hitting track whose YouTube video currently features top comment: ‘This is a good song for having an anxiety attack in a club to.’
After only a couple of months, it’s nearly time for album number three: Careful. From this album, we’ve already been teased with ‘Face The Fire’ – a hazy, hook-laden track that’s characteristically fit for dark dancefloors and lonely bedrooms. It’s predictive of another solid album from the duo. This will, of course, be supported by a string of sweaty, possibly euphoric possibly terrifying live shows. Having built a reputation on the thrill of their gigs, we look forward to descending the sticky stairs of Soup Kitchen, and basking in Boy Harsher’s seductive melancholia once again.
